Just Add Stock winner, Magazines

The striking cover of the New Statesman’s ‘Monarchy Special’ stood out amongst an otherwise strong field of entries. Won over by the cover’s ‘graphic twist’, the judges were impressed with Micha Weidmann's visual take on the issue’s controversial theme: ‘Why Ma’am Must Go’.

Spitalfields-based Micha Weidmann Studio is an art direction and design consultancy working in the luxury and publishing industries. They help creators of high-end products build their brands and communicate effectively. Typical projects include identities, websites, and editorial design. Their design department consists of Weidmann himself, his business partner Chanuki Seresinhe and a crack team of designers.

Weidmann says that his studio often uses stock imagery for weekly publications, news pieces and historic articles. The New Statesman cover is simple and deliberately crude, but he still needed to find a very specific image: ‘It had to be a portrait shot which even without a face would still look at you. This way the type would automatically turn into the face of the person.’

Working to the tight schedules of a weekly magazine, Weidmann found that he had very little time to complete this art directed project. Finding the right stock image wasn’t easy, but library photography allowed him to meet a tight deadline with a deeply arresting image.